Agent Amazon Pt. 01

Sierra Slater ran down the corridor, her high-heeled sandals clicking against the linoleum floor. The guards following her would be in view again soon, and she was struggling to even keep balanced in her shoes. Sure enough, as she rounded a corner one of her heels gave out and sent her tumbling to the ground. As she fell, the strap holding the sandal to her ankle also snapped and it flew off her foot. Sierra barely gave the ruined shoe a moment's thought before she pushed herself back up, hopping on her now-bare foot as she removed her other sandal. She was about to fling it away when she came across a fire escape and had an idea. She opened the door, dropped her shoe and closed the door on it, leaving the sandal wedged in the doorway. Then she swung herself up to the ceiling, bracing her feet against the wall to hold herself up.

The guards soon ran down the corridor beneath her and not one of them thought to look up. One of them saw her shoe in the fire escape and picked it up, then they were all running down the stairs. With a smirk, Sierra quietly lowered herself back down and headed back the way she had come. Now she could move much more slowly and methodically, and was almost completely silent in her bare feet, except for her soles sticking slightly to the floor.

She could finally enter the laboratory that she had been forced to flee from earlier. As soon as she slipped inside she could see a collection of jars and vials filled with various liquids. This must have been the super-soldier research she'd been looking for.

Suddenly, one of the guards appeared in the doorway, levelling a submachine gun at her. Sierra ducked down just as bullets began flying into the tables and shelves, shattering the glasses and spraying their contents onto the floor where they began to pool around Sierra's bare feet. She could feel them oozing between her toes.

"Stop, you idiot!" another guard shouted, shoving the first's gun down. They fanned out into the room, searching for her. Sierra took her chance, leaping up and springing to the door. She gasped in pain as she ran. Both of her feet had been cut by the broken glass. Rather than worry about it, Sierra ran faster, jumping out a window to lose the guards in the foliage around the building. Her feet had a hot stinging sensation and they itched. She hid in a bush and tried to wipe off her feet to look for the cuts. She couldn't find them. The only sign was from little white marks on her skin. The itching, burning feeling was still there though; in fact, it felt like it was spreading completely across the soles of her feet. Who the hell knew what she'd been stepping in? She needed to get out of here and wash her feet.

Sierra took off running to her evac point, tripping the panic button hidden in her clothing. It was hard to run: not only was the hot itching in her feet getting even worse, her head was beginning to throb and her vision was getting blurry. She put on an extra burst of speed as she neared a clearing, now hearing the thumping of helicopter blades in the air drowning out the thumping of her feet on the ground. She was struggling to run in a straight line as she came to the landing site. As she slammed into the helicopter door, she could feel herself blacking out. Two surprised agents grabbed her and dragged her onto the chopper as it lifted off.

...

Sierra woke up in what she realised was a hospital bed. She swung her feet out and shuddered as they hit the cold, sterile floor. She staggered as she stood up. At first she though she was still woozy like before, but then she realised something was off with her balance. She stuck her arm out and knocked several items off the bedside table. She stared at her arm, not having expected to reach that far. The whole room, in fact, seemed oddly small. Sierra took another step, ungainly, and put her arm up on the bathroom door, which was now level with her head. There was no doubt: she was taller than before. Sierra looked over her body, taking in the new length of her arms and legs. She was much more muscular and toned than she'd ever been in her life as well. And her feet! Her feet were huge! She marvelled that it had taken her til now to notice. She took a few more steps, watching her soles squish against the floor. She made her way into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, at which point she gasped out loud. Her face was the same, thankfully, but her hair had turned pure white.

Sierra spent several minutes sitting on her bed, trying to take in what had happened to her. Then some doctors came in an asked to examine her. She had no problem with that, though she found it difficult to keep still as they touched her. She was feeling far more ticklish than usual. The doctors left her a set of clothes and informed her that she had an escort waiting to take her to her debriefing. Sierra changed into a black blouse and jeans and a pair of flats that were too small for her feet, leaving her heels to squash down the backs and hang over the edges. She shook her head at the sight. She'd already worn a Size 9 shoe before and now it felt like her feet had nearly doubled in size. She had no idea what she was going to do about new shoes.

Keeping the shoes on her feet was a pain. In fact, just walking at all with her new giant feet was awkward. Still, she made it to the meeting room and was shown inside where her handler, known to her only as Cypher, was waiting.

"Agent Slater, good to see you up and about again," she said. Sierra took a deep breath.

"Ma'am, I'm afraid I failed my mission. I was unable to procure a sample of any of the experimental formulas." Cypher actually chuckled.

"Actually," she explained, "that's not entirely true. You see, we were in fact able to recover some samples... from the soles of your feet." Sierra stared down at her feet, then back up at Cypher in shock.

"Why don't you sit down?" Cypher asked. Sierra complied.

"I assume you've noticed how your body has changed," Cypher went on. "Apart from the obvious changes to your hair and overall body size, we monitored several changes to your body between when we recovered you and when you woke up. Particularly regarding muscle and bone density, as well as an almost complete restructuring of your metabolism. Neural activity across your whole body has shot up, particularly around your nerve endings." She stood up and walked around the side of the desk.

"The most radical changes appear to have occurred in your feet, presumably because that was the point of exposure." Cypher looked down at Sierra's feet, which she currently had resting on top of her shoes. She quickly shoved them back inside. Noticing Sierra's uneasiness, Cypher sat back down to look her in the eye.

"In light of these discoveries, we would like your permission to continue tests to see exactly what is happening to you, and evaluate you for returning to active service."

"How can I refuse?" said Sierra. Privately, she meant it literally.

"Excellent!" Cypher replied. "I'll send for the agent I lined up to monitor your progress. She is codenamed Spider." After a few minutes another woman entered the room and Sierra stood up to survey her. Her first thought was that Spider looked like her exact opposite. Whereas she had dark skin and light hair (now), Spider was a textbook case for the phrase "raven hair and ivory skin". Sierra had always been rather tall and athletic, even before her exposure to the cocktail in the lab, while Spider was skinny and, while Sierra would not have exactly called her short once, at her size now Spider felt almost petite. Spider looked her up and down, making her feel nervous again.

"Pleased to be working with you," Spider said at last. Sierra didn't feel any better.

Nevertheless, she left with Spider and before long had changed into a sports bra and athletics shorts, and was standing barefoot in the agency's training facility. She began to run the obstacle course and was amazed by how easy it felt. Scaling the course's inclines and climbing walls took no time at all as she used her bare feet to find seemingly impossible footholds. Bars swung out in her path and she zipped out of the way almost effortlessly. Even she was surprised by how fast her reflexes were. While even the best agents usually filled the obstacle course with the sound of them being knocked down, the only sound from Sierra was her soles slapping against the floor. She wasn't even breathing heavily. Sierra had broken every record on the training course within hours. The tests went on to testing endurance, as Sierra pounded her feet on a treadmill and sat underwater holding her breath, strength, where she pushed against ever-increasing weights, performed endless bicep curls and ran laps with increasingly large loads on her shoulders, and speed which similarly escalated until she was dodging rubber bullets being shot at her. After stunning all of the examiners with her results, retrieving a blood sample proved difficult as her skin repeatedly resisted the needles and, eventually, a knife that a rather adventurous researcher had proposed testing on her.

Sierra simply giggled, saying that it tickled. She was now grinning with slightly sheepish pride from the examiners' fascination. Throughout the whole process, she never noticed Spider watching her intently, biting her thumb.

Cypher was pleased with the results as well, and informed Sierra that she would soon be ready to return to missions.

...

Sierra crept through the underbrush of the jungle. Even with her superhuman physique, she was sweating heavily in the steaming heat and humidity. She was wearing a patrol cap concealing her hair, an olive green tank top, camouflage-printed pants and finally, a pair of stiff leather combat boots. She paused to look down at her feet and sighed. As it turned out, they hadn't nearly doubled in size as she'd feared. They HAD doubled in size. Size 18 feet! They looked almost comically oversized even on the rest of her enlarged body. As a result, she'd had to force the largest boots the agency had on hand onto them, worn without socks to help them squeeze in. Now they felt like they were being cooked in an oven, with her sweat-slicked skin badly chafing on the insides. It was torture even for her super-tough skin. She sighted the enemy compound across they way, which was unfortunately surrounded by a tall makeshift wall. Sierra took a running leap, grabbed onto roughly the midsection of the wall and tried to climb up. However, her feet couldn't find a purchase in her clunky boots. Sierra could feel her fingers slipping free of the wood as her toes vainly tried to spread inside the boots, making them ache even more.

This was definitely the last straw. Getting the best grip she could with her left hand, she used the other to literally tear the right boot off her foot, snapping all of the laces in sequence. She paused as she felt fresh air hit her foot, wiggling her toes ecstatically as they were freed from their hot, cramped prison. Instead of simply dropping the boot as she'd intended, she spitefully threw it away into the bushes before quickly pulling off her left boot and doing the same with it. Suddenly, climbing the wall felt like the easiest thing in the world as she spread out her toes and dug them into the crevasses of the crude wooden log wall. She was at the top in no time, then she was vaulting over and dropping near-silently on her bare feet. She quickly and quietly made her way to the central building in the camp. There, on a little table at the back, was the classified data card she'd been sent to retrieve.

"Hey!" a voice called from behind her, and she turned around to see a soldier pointing a pistol at her. Faster than the eye could follow, she spun her foot around and kicked the gun out of his hands. She was on him in the next instant, so he did the first thing that came to his mind: he brought his heavy boot down on her bare toes. Sierra barely even reacted. The soldier had just enough time to rear back in fear before she threw him to the ground and pinned her foot -the same one he'd tried to stomp- on his face, coving his mouth and nose. The soldier struggled for breath, clawing at her leg and foot. Sierra clamped her hands over her mouth as she felt his fingers scribbling over her foot. It had been discovered that despite her incredible physical resilience, she also had extremely enhanced sensory abilities which left her skin, especially on her feet, incredibly ticklish. Eventually the soldier stopped struggling and passed out. Sierra inwardly joked whether it had been from lack of air or having to smell her foot. She padded over to the table, picked up the data card and slid it into her cleavage before heading back outside and over the wall. As she disappeared into the bushes, it dawned on her that throwing her boots out there had been a good idea to hide the evidence. They were unlikely to ever be found in the brush. She smiled at the thought of her boots lying abandoned forever on the jungle floor, gathering moss and maybe housing some insects or a lizard one day. Then she had to keep from laughing out loud as she imagined animals reacting to the lingering smell of her sweaty feet.

Sierra dashed through foliage at blinding speed. She found that, running barefoot, she was able to tell exactly where best to place her feet and spring one foot after the other with incredible ease. It made it feel like she was carrying lead weights in her boots before. She swung off a low-hanging branch, dropped into a semi-dry riverbed and leapt straight out again, leaving perfect imprints of her soles in the mud. She stopped for a bit to get her bearings. As she did, she became aware of a slight throbbing under her feet. It wasn't that they were sore; in fact they felt better than ever. Listening around, she heard the sound of snapping branches and realised someone was coming. She jumped up into a tree from branch to branch and watched as a squad of soldiers came into view. Sierra realised that she'd been able to sense the vibrations of them approaching like a snake. Her feet, it seemed, just continued to surprise her. They did a sweep of the area and began to move on. Sierra almost laughed as she watched them crashing through the undergrowth in their clumsy boots. She curled her bare toes around the branch almost triumphantly. Suddenly she felt something moving between her breasts and realised too late that the data card was slipping loose. It dropped out of the bottom of her shirt and began to fall to the ground. Without even thinking, she lashed out with her foot and snatched the card out of the air between her toes. There was no time to dwell on that though. Sierra dropped straight out of the tree and hit the ground running in the direction of the escape point. Her cap blew off on the process, allowing her white hair to wave freely, but it didn't matter now. She was back at home base before anyone realised what was happening, Spider giving an impressed whistle as she arrived. Soon the agents playing the enemy arrived, their faces glum. Sierra noticed one trying to wipe an oddly shaped smudge of dirt off his face and gave him a knowing smile. He gave a start, turned away and started wiping harder.

"Mission accomplished!" Spider reported to Cypher as they entered her office.

"Where's the package?" Cypher asked.

"Right here!" Sierra replied, thrusting out her foot with the data card still wedged between her toes. Cypher stared incredulously. Spider turned away but stared straight at Sierra's foot out of the corner of her eye. Sierra's foot was coated in mud and the sole was completely black.

"Sorry," Sierra said sheepishly, retrieving the card from her toes, trying to wipe the mud off and then dropping it onto Cypher's desk.

"Well," Cypher said at last. "That completes the exercise. Take 5 and wait for your evaluation."

Sierra gave her feet a long soak before taking a nice hot shower. After the ticklish chore of scrubbing her feet clean, she took the time to treat them with moisturiser. It just seemed right somehow, as though rewarding them for their performance. However, that relaxation had soon worn off and she had begun to get nervous about her evaluation. She was currently pacing around the new room she'd been given, focussing on the carpet fibres slightly tickling her soles to keep her mind occupied. It was then that her communicator buzzed her with a message to report to Cypher. So she made her way down where she was greeted by Spider.

"Um..." she cleared her throat, indicating down at Sierra's feet. Sierra looked down and realised with horror that she'd forgotten to put on any shoes. She was just about to turn back for some when she heard Cypher's voice beckoning her in. So Sierra grimaced and entered the office, bare feet and all.

Cypher immediately noticed. She tried not to make it obvious, but Sierra could tell.

"Ah, Agent Slater," Cypher began. "I am pleased to report that you have passed your evaluation with flying colors. It was in fact insisted for you to return to active duty. Spider has been selected as your partner." Sierra looked around at Spider, who gave her a smile and a shrug.

"Furthermore..." Cypher peered over her desk at Sierra's feet. Sierra rubbed them together and scrunched her toes self-consciously.

"After assessing the data from your tests and your performance in the training exercise, it has been universally agreed that footwear is not only unnecessary, but actively hindering to your abilities. Therefore, you are not only authorised, but advised to conduct missions barefoot from now on."

"Understood!" Sierra replied with more enthusiasm than she'd intended.

"Finally," Cypher went on, "a new codename has been... suggested... for you." Cypher's eyes unconsciously darted to where Spider was standing and Sierra heard shuffling behind her. She had to stop herself from grinning.

"The suggested codename is "Amazon"," Cypher finished. This time Sierra did grin.

"I accept."